Be It Ever So Messy, There's No Place Like Home: The "Adventures" of a 50-Something Southern California Mom - who used to be interesting... and her teenage daughter.

August 2010

August 31, 2010

It feels strange to be flashing back now to the trip we took back in June (especially since Megan has been back in school for two weeks now!)... but our summer was extraordinarily short (and busy) this year. And I've yet to share the most interesting things we saw in the UK!

I'm going to do the best I can to wrap that up as soon as possible. But for now, I'll just leave you with some photos I took while exploring the Coastal Path at the Cardiff Bay Barrage, which opened in 2008 -- which means it was new to ME.

In recent years, Cardiff has become something of a media center, as more television programming is originating from BBC Wales. The scene above will be familiar to anyone who watched Doctor Who's adult-oriented spinoff, Torchwood. Officially, the building on the left is Wales Millennium Centre, an arts complex whose bold architectural form makes it Cardiff's version of L.A.'s Disney Hall. I was not surprised to learn that the natives have nicknamed it the Armadillo.

In Torchwood, this building sits above "The Hub," the secret headquarters of the Welsh unit tasked with investigating extraterrestrial technology (and the aliens who bring them).

This restored Victorian beauty is now a visitors center and events venue - but it was originally the headquarters of the company that handled transport of Welsh coal. This building is special to our family, as my husband's grandfather worked there.

The Merchant Seafarers' War Memorial is a gorgeous sculpture by artist Brian Fell. It commemorates contributions of those merchant seamen who were lost at sea during World War II. I lam so not artsy... but I can't help but love the elegance of this piece and the artist's concept, constructing a sad face that also resembles the hull of a ship.

I get this one... which is something I cannot say about most modern pieces of art.

This is a view of Flatholm and Steepholm, two islands in the center of the Bristol Channel, which serve as kind of touchstones to the citizens of Cardiff.

One of the purposes of this trip was to fulfill my late father-in-law's wishes that his ashes be scattered in Cardiff Bay. My husband, mother-in-law and brother-in-law rented a small boat and did just that, getting quite close to these islands. In the summer, there are cruises out to Flatholm, which is only a 45-minute boat ride. This is something we may do on our next summer visit.

We hit the coastal path in the late afternoon, after we had already been doing quite a bit of walking in Cardiff City Centre. We could have walked all the way to Penarth, but aching feet caused us to turn back. This is the view of the Bay development from the path.

August 30, 2010

One of the things I most regret skipping on our recent trip to London was high tea with my daughter. Our time there was too short and the weather was too hot and muggy.

This is why the invitation to enjoy a Mommy and Me tea at Beverly Hills' luxurious SLS Hotel sounded so appealing. The temperatures in L.A. may be even higher than what we experienced in London, but at least we have air conditioning.

Scheduling issues resulted in a month's delay between the invitation and our actual reservation at the hotel. That has to be the reason why I failed to note that the restaurants at the SLS are under the supervision of chef José Andrés... the one profiled in this 60 Minutes piece with Anderson Cooper:

As you can imagine from that piece, this is NOT my mum-in-law's high tea! It is also not the typical fare for a Mommy and Me type of event. There isn't anything about it that might remind you of classes at Gymboree -- no special kids' menu.

The "Mommy" part is a glass of really good champagne, which works for me -- but the savory bites might be a tough sell if you're bringing a picky young eater - or a picky older eater, as is the case with my 14-year-old.

These include a combination of cucumber, goat cheese and "tomato caviar," little steamed buns topped with caviar and creme fraiche, and a beet macaron filled with goat cheese, little sandwiches of foie gras and quince and smoked salmon and coconut, and a couple of tiny cones like the one that delighted Anderson Cooper in the clip above.

The only choice on that part of the menu that looked remotely like something that would tempt a child was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Unfortunately, my daughter hates peanut butter AND jelly... and the item on the beautiful three-tiered tray did not resemble any PB&J sandwich I'd ever before seen. It was, however, delicious -- as was each of the little bites I got to have to myself (since my kid refused to try any of them).

I'm afraid Megan had to spend the next half hour listening to me gasp "Oh my God," each time I tried something different. It was almost a reflex. Andrés' food IS that astonishing -- and good.

And even though MY teen is picky, I have seen a lot of LA kids who happily lap up all the interesting and exotic foods a multi-cultural city has to offer. While we were there, another 14-year-old was celebrating her birthday with family and close friends. I think this is a great spot to bring a teen or tween ready for a more grown-up dining experience.

Fortunately, high teas traditionally include sweet dessert offerings to go with the savories. And my daughter did not have to just sit there watching me eat, because here she found some intriguing items of her own.

"I really want to try those chocolate covered pop rocks."

She was kind enough to offer me a few pop rock crumbs so I could report on how good they were. Other sweets were a saffron pate de fruit (kind of a fruit jelly covered in edible rice paper), hazelnut chocolate cookie, dark and white chocolates infused with fruit flavors, an almond orange tart, chocolate "after eights" (a very thin patty of dark chocolate embedded with fresh mint) and "financiers," which looked and tasted like madeleines.

We both agreed that the best dessert was the one that was both the simplest and the most creative: Skewered fresh raspberries with a little squeeze of raspberry juice at the end. We were instructed to place a berry in our mouths and squeeze the juice in with it. You kind of have to see it and try it yourself.

"I wish we could get more of these," my daughter said. I had to agree.

The wait staff could not have been more friendly and solicitous. Casey,
our waiter, told me that Tres also serves a fabulous weekend brunch...
and I'm already looking for a good excuse to visit Bazaar so I can
sample José Andrés' famous traditional and modern tapas.

Tea at Trés is served daily from 3:00 - 5:00; the cost is a reasonable $26 per person ($14 additional for a glass of champagne). Although I could hear my husband complain about the portions ("No one is going to get fat on that"), it all tastes so fabulous, I think it's well worth the price.

DISCLOSURE: I received no monetary compensation for this post. Our tea was comped by the folks at the restaurant for the purpose of writing this review. I made no promises that the review would be a positive one. I am a little bit sorry I got to experience this place, because now that I have, I'm going to have a hard time paying for all the return trips I'm now desperate to make.

August 27, 2010

Liza Elcayam was my daughter's wonderful teacher in kindergarten, second and fourth grade.

After years of working online, it seemed like just another attempt to gain cheap publicity on the backs of moms who use social media. The money is significant... unfortunately, there are thousands of schools in this country who are hurting for funds. How do you pick the 20 most worthy? Certainly not through a popularity contest.

Then I received an email from the PTA President of Megan's old elementary school.

Out of thousands of eligible public and private schools throughout the country -- somehow -- Darby Avenue Elementary had garnered enough votes to make it into the Top 100. And it was the only LAUSD school to make that list (just one out of nearly 800 in the District).

It had a shot.

So I went to the Kohl's Cares Facebook page and cast five votes for Darby Avenue Elementary. I liked the fact that you get 20 votes to allocate any way that you like to as many schools -- but are limited to five per school. So I was able to vote for Megan's former middle school and current high school, as well.

Then I checked the rankings. At the time, Darby Avenue Elementary was number 80 with about 5,000 votes. The Top 20 schools were almost all private parochial schools on the East Coast, with 50,000 votes a piece. I think there was one public school in the entire list.

Obviously, there are folks at these private schools who have been engaging in some sophisticated social media campaigns to garner that volume of votes.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. After all, that's how Darby's PTA managed to get 5,000 of its own votes out of a school population of about 300 students. And it's exactly what I did by tweeting news of the campaign to my 4,500 followers... and writing this post here.

Since then, Darby's stock has gone up on the Kohl's leaderboard: At this writing, they're ranked #52 with 9,402 votes. But the top vote getters are in the astronomical range: The number one school has nearly 83,000 votes. Eighteen of the top 20 are private parochial schools -- and now, there are some on the West Coast, including one I've never heard of that's right here in my community. There are only two public schools in the entire Top 20.

I would love to see a report on how those schools campaigned for those votes. That will probably come when the competition ends (after September 2). In the meantime, I was pleased to see that Darby Elementary was getting some media assistance of its own today, by staging a rally that included a visit from Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. And it was covered by all of the local news stations, including Fox, which set up cameras at the school at 4:30 AM this morning.

My fingers are crossed that in this huge metropolitan region of 24 million people, some will be motivated to get onto Facebook and vote for this little elementary school in Northridge. As Villaraigosa pointed out, all they need is for 10,000 of those people to cast five votes and they'll hit 50,000. (OK - so now they will need 20,000 people to do that... but that's still a tiny fraction of the people who will see the news coverage.)

At the same time, I see the irony in going all out to support a school that's already doing better than most in our troubled school district. Darby has some really good teachers and an energetic PTA. They don't have as many English learners and low income families as other schools in the district. Their API scores are high. At first glance, this is a school that doesn't need help.

Unfortunately, there isn't a public school in the district that doesn't need financial help. Every year, LAUSD squeezes the budget belt tighter. Every year, our schools lose teachers and support personnel. Five years ago (when my daughter attended Darby), there were classroom aides and janitorial services. Now, I'm told that parents are being asked to donate the most basic supplies... like toilet paper.

Half a million dollars could bring back instruction in the arts... music... science... a school nurse...

I keep hearing on the news that while money is tight and unemployment is high and banks are not lending... at the same time, corporations are sitting on big piles of cash. Kohl's is spending $10 million on a social media campaign that is getting everyone with a child in school to talk about them, engendering good will in the community and ultimately, garnering them new customers. It sounds like a pretty good return on investment.

What if more major corporations followed suit? I'm not talking about more popularity contests -- but what if Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Target, Federated, Kroeger, McDonald's, et al each threw some real money at our nation's schools?

August 26, 2010

I think I mentioned in my BlogHer post that I was privileged to be part of a group of about 25 political bloggers that got to meet with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York...

...I was privileged, because I don't think I've contributed a post to the MOMocrats all year.

However, while so many of us were gathered together in New York, I was tasked with getting video footage of as many of them as possible. This is one of the reasons I enjoyed my 2010 BlogHer experience so much, because I love these women, for how they write and who they are. And I left New York determined to contribute more to the site.

I didn't say much. I just pointed the camcorder at whoever was speaking and hoped I'd like the results.

I finally got around to looking at the footage I shot yesterday... and was pleased to discover that most of it doesn't suck.

That's good, because today is Equality Day -- the 90th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, extending women the right to vote -- and I just knew I'd caught the Senator on tape with something really good to say. And it inspired me to write a post... which you can view here over at MOMocrats.